Right Dad?

This is the first prototype of the Alarm Clock Project. It is currently hooked up to a doorbell chime. This demos the user interaction style with the rotary encoder. The 5-digit number on the top line is for debugging – it represents the time of day expressed in total seconds elapsed since midnight.

I think I fried my programmer. I knew something bad happened when I shorted 24v into the voltage regulator. So I must have killed the programmer along with it. Now it shorts out my circuits every time I connect it. I doubt there is anything I can do now.  I have AVRStudio running on WindowsXP, running on Parallels, runnong on my iMac, and this little programmer worked through it all without any complaints. I’ll miss this little guy. It might be time to move on to the Arduino platform, considering I can get a USB development board for about $40, and a new programmer will run be about $150.

I don’t know what thrills me more… The idea of walking around in a blanket, or walking around in a blanket with an LED booklight. Products like this evoke so many conflicting emotions, I dunno where to begin. Combine a brilliant concept, with the benefits of comfort, economy and environment, with something that is outright disturbing, in a Jonestown sort of way. Could this be how the illuminati is preparing us all for 2012, by donning us all with sacrificial robes? No bloodstains, no problem!

CHRIS SORENSEN

BUSINESS REPORTER

As many as 129,000 cellphones made by Korean conglomerate LG are being recalled across Canada because they may not meet federal guidelines for radio frequency exposure.

The voluntary recall was issued after tests found the LG 150, a black flip phone, did not meet Industry Canada specifications for radio frequency emissions, resulting in the device being decertified.

via TheStar.com | Business | Company recalls LG 150 cellphones

It’s one thing for a company to release a product that doesn’t meet the needs or  expectations of their users, it is a whole other thing when they release a product that is a potential health hazard. The LG 150 may be one of hundreds of canary corpses in the mobility coalmine.

Does it even matter when health warnings on mobile phones are substantiated? People keep using them anyway, just like people continue to eat junk food and drink and drive. For better or worse, cell phones have replaced the cigarette as the ubiquitous vice accessory. And just like tobacco, governments are in no hurry to act on the warnings from the scientific community.

With its most important numbers rendered in supersized Helvetica—9 a.m. arrival, lunch at noon, out the door by 5—Swedish firm BVD’s new Klocka clock for Askul looks like it’s for a 1950s businessman, which actually makes sense. The Tokyo-based company—whose name means “delivery following day and in Japan is a strange mix of Amazon.com and FedEx, is known mainly for its office products; BVD’s other recent designs for the Japanese giant include candy-colored packaging for USB sticks and a series of Muji-like pens. www.bvd.se

via I.D. – I.D. Magazine – New + Notable Product Designs.

I could use a few of these around the house.

David Cameron admitted to the audience that he has no idea if there is intelligent life in space

Nico Hines

David Cameron vowed today that if he was elected Prime Minister he would bring an end to the era of government secrecy over UFOs and extra-terrestrial activity.

Speaking at one of his “Cameron Direct” public meetings, the Conservative Party leader pledged that a Tory government would be “entirely open and frank” in sharing any information about alien life-forms.

At the meeting in Tynemouth, North-East England, he was questioned about a string of recent mysterious incidents. “I have no idea if there is intelligent life out there,” he replied. “I do believe in freedom of information and openness and this question has been asked from time to time, and I think we should be as open and clear as possible.”

via David Cameron: we will publish secret UFO files – Times Online .

The UFO rumor mill seems to have been fired up again. The media has escalated to a near frenzy in the past 12 months with this topic, especially in the UK media. We’ve heard from a variety of witnesses, some average civilians, some government insiders, however this is a new precedent: A candidate for leadership of a G7 nation has pledged more “openness” in regard to the UFO phenomena. So…Is someone coming to dinner?

A devout Christian has become the first driver to refuse to get behind the wheel of a bus bearing an atheist poster declaring God probably does not exist.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Last Updated: 11:52PM GMT 16 Jan 2009

Ron Heather, a Christian bus driver, refused to drive bus with atheist message Photo: SOLENT NEWS

Ron Heather, 62, walked out in protest after seeing the advert declaring: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

He told his managers he could not drive the bus because the slogan, placed on the side of 800 buses across the country last week after a fundraising campaign raised £140,000, went against his faith.

via Atheist bus adverts: Christian refuses to drive bus declaring ‘there’s probably no God’ – Telegraph.

London busses have been raking it in from the PR war between evangelicals and atheists in recent weeks. Now a bus driver has raised the stakes by refusing to drive a bus carrying the athiest message. I feel fortunate to live in a time where I can be a spectator to how this plays out, though I have doubts that either camp will ever get their money’s worth in winning over the hearts and minds of the public wearily making their way to and from work.

The problem I have with campaigns like these, whether pushing an athiest message or a “theist” message, is that they both present a message that underestimates the intelligence of the audience. To inform the public that “god is great” or “there probably is no god” is equally laughable, because either campaign comes from people who think they need to enlighten people with their message. And naturally, when this happens, some people get offended, and push back.

What will happen, for example, when a Muslim bus driver walks off the job because he doesn’t like the signs promoting JesusSaid.org, which enlightens their audience with reminders of God’s wrath.

Things can only get interesting, now that the atheist bus campaign has come to Canada.

So what do you do when you:  1. Were arrested for hacking into US Military networks with a dial up modem to get a glimpse of some UFO pictures, 2. Are facing extradition to said country, and to top it all off, 3. Suffer from Asperger’s syndrome?

Why, you get a green screen and make yourself into an internet star, fashioned after the cool retro stylings of Seal, of course.

This video may be ghetto as it gets for 2008, but when you follow the whole McKinnon story, you have to stand in awe of the guy. Gary, please put some tracks up for sale on iTunes so we can all get behind your cause. Then perhaps your next video can feature flame throwing gestures and CGI dolphins.

Only Bjork can inspire robots to make out and gush milky warmth over a sterile laboratory floor. I can always appreciate her work as she consistently supports the fearsome quantum principles that the world presented to us is, at best, an illusion that is entirely subject to individual interpretation.